Oh, it's bliss alright

Mike e-mails everyone an Excel sheet every morning with the sales figures from the day before. I recently added some things to the sheet to help process the information more easily. Apparently when I did, the saved printing preferences got lost. I don’t know how, but these things happen, no biggie.

So VP Rod sends Mike a four page printout of the spreadsheet with the handwritten note “Doesn’t print on one page. Fix.”

Captain Intelligence’s grasp of sentence structure aside, adjusting your print settings to do this is a fairly simple process. I’m not a computer illiterate hater, people that don’t know how to use their machines mean job security for me, so I'm happy to help. So I wrote a little how-to with six steps and sent it to him in an e-mail with a note that said I’d be happy to show it to him in person if he wanted.

Two hours later, I get a phone call from HR. “You sent Rod the instructions for printing the spreadsheet, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, this is too much for him and he called me to ask you if you would just find some way to make it work automatically.”
“Possibly, but all he has to do is right there in front of him, and it takes 10 seconds more than it does to print anything.”
“I know, but that’s how he wants it.”

First of all, why would you not want to know how to do something so simple? It’s just basic, and it helps you understand the functionality of this machine you use EVERY DAY. I have no respect for people who stay intentionally ignorant of something so simple.

Second, instead of taking two minutes to learn this basic process, he tied up me and the HR guy for at least a half hour. How’s that for efficient use of corporate resources?

Waste of flesh.